Toby Keith

Look over his catalog of songs and a theme starts to emerge: “Drinks After Work,” “Hope on the Rocks,” “I Like Girls That Drink Beer,” “Beers Ago” and “Red Solo Cup.” And that’s just his last five singles. Over the last 20 years Keith has recorded plenty of great drinking tunes.

“Some of the tailgates for my shows start at 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon, and they’re monsters,” Keith said during a phone interview. “The party starts then and I don’t hit the stage until 9. The Red Solo Cup tour kicked things up to another level.”

The Jimmy Buffett-esque atmosphere of Keith performances since the success of “Red Solo Cup” should come as no surprise. Keith asked Buffett to perform on that song with him, though the pirate ultimately turned it down. But there were no hard feelings, and Keith is featured on Buffett’s new single “Too Drunk to Karaoke.”

Not that Keith’s shows are just a big drinking fest, sometimes they’re for a good cause. In June he hosted the Oklahoma Twister Relief Concert in Norman, Okla., where he lives. (He grew up in Moore, Okla.) Keith said while the amount of money raised is still being tabulated, more than 65,000 people turned up to see him, Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson, Sammy Hagar, Carrie Underwood and others.

Beyond doing good for his community, the concert had an added benefit for Keith.

“One of my first jobs was selling Cokes in that stadium (Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium), and I grew up just a few miles away, but I never had played it,” Keith said. “Van Halen, U2, I think the Stones had played it, but the promoters said we had the largest crowd for a music concert in the state of Oklahoma. So that was a pretty big deal for us.”

Speaking of deals, over his career Keith has revealed himself to be a pretty successful businessman. In June he was on the cover of Forbes, which called him “Country’s $500 Million Man” and estimated his earnings over the last year as behind only Lady Gaga, Madonna and Bon Jovi. Beyond touring, he’s got his own chain of restaurants, Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill. He helped found two record labels, Show Dog (home to Trace Adkins) and Big Machine Records (home to Taylor Swift and Rascal Flatts).

Keith said some of his moves are just necessities, such as buying the Belmar Golf Club in Norman.

“It’s very close to my ranch, and it’s the only coun­try club out there in that part of the world,” Keith said. “So I basically kind of saved it for the community. And myself. I play golf every day.”

Keith has had enough hits that he could fill a set list with nothing but No. 1s, but that’s not how he does things. He said some of those songs didn’t get more than a few months in his show before he abandon­ed them for others.

Keith said there’s a differ­ence between a hit and a No. 1.

“If you get a turntable hit, you’re really not breaking any ground,” Keith said. “I’d rather go to No. 10 with a single that sells a million copies and gets everyone to buy a T-shirt. At the end of the day you can tell when you hit the first note whether a song will get a reaction or not. But I’ll never take the easy road just for the sake of it.”